This specification generally relates to targeted advertising.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources, such as text, images, videos, audio files, and other multimedia content. Advertisers can use the Internet as a conduit to provide advertisements to consumers to market the advertisers' products and services. The success of advertisers' advertising campaigns is affected by many factors. For example, the success (e.g., as measured by conversion rate or return on investment) of the campaign can depend, in part, on the targeting criteria with which the advertisements are targeted. For example, an advertiser can often increase the success of its advertising campaign by targeting particular advertisements to consumers likely to be receptive to the advertisements (e.g., providing advertisements to consumers that have an interest in the subject matter of the advertisements).
Some advertisers use keywords to target their advertisements to particular consumer populations. For example, an advertiser selects keywords for an advertisement such that when a consumer causes a search query to be submitted to search system that includes terms that are related to the advertiser's keyword(s), the advertiser's advertisement is eligible to be presented on a search results page along with search results responsive to the consumer's search query. In this way relevant advertisements can be presented to the consumer based on relationships between the terms of the search query and the advertisement keywords. However, evaluating the quality of such search query term/advertisement keyword relationships, which, in turn, determines which advertisements are presented to a consumer, can be challenging.